It wasn't poison damage when it came out, (double hugalaz would have one-shotted Horkvals) but I don't think it was cold damage either. (or it would have one-shotted Xorans) I'm pretty sure it was acid damage (so no one was strong or weak against it) until some time recently. If it's cold damage now, that's kinda new and I don't know when it happened, because I specifically remember the Wardens house being confused by the fact that Hugalaz had two different damage types depending on how you used it. (The combat savvy understood, but it was kinda unintuitive)

If somehow we've all been confused for the last 8 years and it's always been cold damage, I don't know why Someone would confuse the issue by putting "acidic" in there. Especially when the Hugalaz ground effect doesn't have that adjective, and when damage type is already obscure enough without misleading messages. If I think about it, damage type would be some nice info in the AB files of relevant abilities. It's kinda weird that we, as characters, can't seem to tell the difference between hot, cold, and blunt force trauma without extensive testing.

-- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.

Runeblade hugalaz was originally blunt, same as ground hugalaz/hailstorm. They were all later changed to cold, but ground hugalaz/hailstorm were still blunt for a long time after that (I don't know if it's actually been fixed yet, it's possible they're still blunt; runeblade hugalaz was properly cold damage last time I checked).

That's the kinda reaction I got from this Airius guy earlier. No role play at all went straight to attacking me with insults in an ooc manner. An what truly pissed me off is he lied to his city about what happened. I don't steal often cause I find it boring and I definitely don't steal from people just starting the game basically. Not sure what I did to get so much hate

I haven't played in years but to me the bottle neck appeared to be in how locking works... giving 2 afflictions every 2 seconds could be 3 afflictions every 3 or even 4 afflictions every 4 without too many changes to the game, if locks worked differently.

And depending on how afflictions are generated, one line of text could theoretically indicate two (or even more) afflictions.

Since you never try to lock without a stack of some kind, back in the day, the locking afflictions could in theory be connected directly to the end of a stack, which would allow them to stop being unique afflictions, which should allow afflictions to be combined together and slowed down without changing too many things fundamentally.